Louis Pasteur Quotes

It is my most poignant sorrow that I enter it [The Pasteur Institute] as a man already vanquished by age, no longer surrounded by any of my former masters, nor any of the companions of my struggles, neither Dumas, nor Bouley, nor Paul Bert, nor Vulpian, who, after having been, like you, my dear Grancher, the counsellor of my early efforts, became the most convinced and energetic defender of my method!
Louis Pasteur

I have at least the consolation of the thought that all this work which we defended together is destined not to perish. And this faith in our science is shared by the collaborators and disciples here present.
Louis Pasteur

Hold fast to the enthusiasm, but make strict accuracy its inseparable companion. Assert nothing that cannot be proved in some simple and decisive fashion.
Louis Pasteur

Cultivate the critical spirit. Taken by itself, it is neither an awakener of ideas no an incentive to great deeds. But without it nothing is stable. It always has the last word.
Louis Pasteur

To believe that you have discovered an important scientific fact, is to feel a feverish desire to proclaim it, and yet to force yourself, for days and weeks, sometimes for years, to combat your own discovery, to do your utmost to disprove your own experiments, and to refrain from announcing what you have discovered until you have exhausted every contrary hypothesis, that indeed is an arduous task.
Louis Pasteur

When, after all these efforts, you arrive at certainty, you experience one of the greatest joys that the human soul can know, and the thought, that you will contribute to the honour of your country renders this joy even more profound.
Louis Pasteur

Even if science has no country, the man of science must have one, and it is to her that he should give the credit for the influence which his labours may have throughout the world.
Louis Pasteur

I would like to say that it seems to me that two contrary laws are today at war: one, a law of blood and death, which, by daily inventing new methods of combat, forces the peoples to be forever ready for the field of battle; and the other, a law of peace and labour and health, which dreams only of delivering mankind from the scourges that beset it.
Louis Pasteur

One [law] seeks only violent conquests, the other only the assuagement of human ills. The later places a single human life above all victories; the former would sacrifice hundreds of thousands of existences to the ambition of one man alone. The law of which we are in the instruments seeks, even in the midst of carnage, to stay the bloody havoc wrought by the law of war. The bandaging inspired by our antiseptic methods may preserve thousands of soldiers. Which of these laws will be victorious over the other? God alone knows.
Louis Pasteur

French science will do its utmost, in obedience to the law of humanity, to extend the frontiers of life.
Louis Pasteur

In the midst of all this brilliance my first thought reverts regretfully to all those men of science who spent their lives in vain endeavours. In the past they had to struggle against prejudices which stifled their ideas. These prejudices conquered, they still encountered other obstacles and difficulties of all sorts.
Louis Pasteur

One of my compatriots from the Jura, the mayor of the city of Dole, has brought me a photograph of the very humble home in which my father and mother lived their hard and needy life.
Louis Pasteur

The Faculty of Lille evoke the memory of my first studies in crystallography and fermentations, which opened to me an entire new world. What boundless hopes took possession of me when I first grasped the fact that there were laws behind all those obscure phenomena!
Louis Pasteur

If at times I have troubled the calm of our Academies with somewhat heated discussions, it was because I was passionately defending the truth.
Louis Pasteur

You bring me the most profound joy that can be felt by a man who believes invincibly that science and peace will triumph over ignorance and war; that the various peoples will come to an agreement not to destroy, but to build up; and that the future will belong to those who have done the most for suffering humanity.
Louis Pasteur

[On science and medicine] Young men, young men, put your confidence in these sure and powerful methods, from which we have as yet learned only the first secrets.
Louis Pasteur

I say to all of you, whatever your career may be, guard yourselves from the taint of destructive and sterile scepticism, refuse to be discouraged by the sadness of certain hours which pass over a nation. Live in the serene peace of laboratories and libraries.
Louis Pasteur

Do so up to the moment when, perhaps you may have the immense happiness of thinking that you have contributed in some measure to the progress and well-being of humanity.
Louis Pasteur

Where life favours your efforts to a greater or less extent, one must have earned the right to say when the great goal draws near: ‘I have done what I could’.
Louis Pasteur

Just as the great artist, Roty, on the reverse side of this medal, has hidden under roses the date of heavy years that weigh upon my life, so you, my dear colleagues, have wished to give to my old age a spectacle to gladden it immensely, the spectacle of all this eager and affectionate youth.
Louis Pasteur

[On creatures that were either dangerous, ridiculous or vile!] Microbes in human form.
Louis Pasteur

[To his grandchildren just before he died] I am weeping, my children, because I am soon to leave you.
Louis Pasteur

Say to yourselves first: What have I done towards my own education? And then, in proportion as you advance: What have I done for my country?
Louis Pasteur

Happy is he who carries within him his own ideal, and lives in obedience to it.
Louis Pasteur

Come! We are going to transform the world by our discoveries!
Louis Pasteur